AuthorTopic: Got lost in Adventurer Mode (Read 350 times)

I just started my first game in the adventurer mode. I started as a human in a dwarven fortress. I walked around the fortress but couldn't find any way out so I tried fast traveling but I didn't understand the UI of fast traveling and ended up at some random place below the surface. There is just a wide tunnel going from west to east, I followed it for some time but it goes on forever. Now I have two questions:

1. What is the best way to find out?

2. Is there a more in depth explanation of fast traveling then the one under "Adventurer mode" in the wiki? I have trouble navigating around because I can see almost nothing (maybe because it is dark in the tunnel?).

Fast Travel menu has a nice local map display, which does help you with your travel orientation. You will be visiting this menu, no matter if you are using Fast Travel or not. Just for the sake of this map. You do not need to use Fast Travel, if you hit immediately "z-stop" key.

You could just "walk" and later even "jog" while using "sneak", which helps training your skills and abilities. However the random animal spawn algorithm translating the abstract world into the adventure playing world, could at rare occasions do something nasty, like bringing nasty lag in some location and/or hard crashes to desktop (0 weight weasel?). But then it can also happen anytime you exit Fast Travel too, so... Choices

To get to the surface, I would suggest you fast travel back or "walk/jog" to the dwarven fortress. Once there, try finding your way to the surface yet again. Symbol for stairs could be covered under some items on the floor. There are only few other paths, which lead also from underground to surface. They are far away and well between. Some can be found in monster's caves. Most monster sites are lairs not caves. Other passages to/from underworld are at goblins' Dark Fortresses ( how many depends how well gobbos do in this world ) and not advisable without fully skilled and trained adventurer. Plus 10000 trolls at Dark Fortresses will slow down to crawl even 4ghz I7 cpu. So, be warned. Most dwarven fortresses should have those passages to underground sealed though. Also, if you play on tiny world, try not to make too much impact on world, before getting to the surface. Walls inside of fortresses do shift from time to time, while losing inside of them and from the rest of the game some characters, which you are maybe later interested to meet. You could close yourself underground this way.

The problem is I have no idea where the fortress is. I got out of my first fast travel attempt and found myself in this tunnel with both directions undiscovered. I tried to find out how fast traveling works and may have moved in some random directions. And I am not able to read the map because I have no idea what the symbols mean. Can I identify villages, fortresses and so on on the map? How? Is there a map legend somewhere?